Agricultural Distortions, Structural Change, and Economic Growth: A Cross‐Country Analysis
利用跨国时间序列数据，研究农业税收政策如何影响收入趋同、结构变迁和经济增长，发现歧视农业的政策阻碍了穷国的结构转型和增长，且无益于长期经济表现。
Taxing agriculture to mobilize resources for industrialization has been a widely used development strategy. Using novel cross‐country time‐series data sets with direct measures of agricultural taxation, we examine how a policy bias against agriculture affects the speed of convergence in income per capita, structural change, and economic growth. We find that distortionary agricultural policies in poor economies can account for the emergence of convergence clubs in our sample by significantly retarding their structural transformation and economic growth. Overall, we find no evidence suggesting that policies that discriminate against agriculture have been beneficial for long‐term economic growth.